Physicians' psychophysiological stress reaction in medical communication of bad news: A critical literature review.

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State: Public
Version: Author's accepted manuscript
Serval ID
serval:BIB_04B7306127B8
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Publication sub-type
Review (review): journal as complete as possible of one specific subject, written based on exhaustive analyses from published work.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Physicians' psychophysiological stress reaction in medical communication of bad news: A critical literature review.
Journal
International Journal of Psychophysiology
Author(s)
Studer Regina K., Danuser Brigitta, Gomez Patrick
ISSN
1872-7697 (Electronic)
ISSN-L
0167-8760
Publication state
Published
Issued date
10/2017
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
120
Pages
14-22
Language
english
Notes
Publication types: Journal Article ; Review
Publication Status: ppublish
Abstract
Stress is a common phenomenon in medical professions. Breaking bad news (BBN) is reported to be a particularly distressing activity for physicians. Traditionally, the stress experienced by physicians when BBN was assessed exclusively using self-reporting. Only recently, the field of difficult physician-patient communication has used physiological assessments to better understand physicians' stress reactions.
This paper's goals are to (a) review current knowledge about the physicians' psychophysiological stress reactions in BBN situations, (b) discuss methodological aspects of these studies and (c) suggest directions for future research.
The seven studies identified all used scenarios with simulated patients but were heterogeneous with regard to other methodological aspects, such as the psychophysiological parameters, time points and durations assessed, comparative settings, and operationalisation of the communication scenarios. Despite this heterogeneity, all the papers reported increases in psychological and/or physiological activation when breaking bad news in comparison to control conditions, such as history taking or breaking good news.
Taken together, the studies reviewed support the hypothesis that BBN is a psychophysiologically arousing and stressful task for medical professionals. However, much remains to be done. We suggest several future directions to advance the field. These include (a) expanding and refining the conceptual framework, (b) extending assessments to include more diverse physiological parameters, (c) exploring the modulatory effects of physicians' personal characteristics (e.g. level of experience), (d) comparing simulated and real-life physician-patient encounters and (e) combining physiological assessment with a discourse analysis of physician-patient communication.
Keywords
Communication, Humans, Physician-Patient Relations, Physicians/psychology, Stress, Psychological/physiopathology, Breaking bad news, Medical students, Physicians, Physician–patient communication, Psychophysiology, Stress reaction
Pubmed
Web of science
Open Access
Yes
Create date
12/04/2017 18:40
Last modification date
20/08/2019 12:26
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